1. Field of Invention
This invention relates in general to wire bending tools and in particular to benders for fabrication of jewelry components comprising wire.
2. Description of Prior Art
In the prior art, products constructed of bent wire or rod are often made utilizing bending jigs with pins around which wire or rod material is bent into the shapes specific to the application.
Components for manufactured goods, including reinforcing rod for cast concrete, usually are required to be uniform in shape and the dimensions are determined by the use to which they are put. Thus, a custom made jig is an ideal tool for bending the feed stock for such components.
Such jigs and associated tools are easily and inexpensively fabricated to produce the infinite variety of products varying in size, shape, and material. Heavy bending jigs even for heavy rod stock such as reinforcing bar can easily be constructed without resorting to machine shop facilities by welding common pipe and plate. Light bending jigs are often merely nails driven into a sheet of plywood. Therefore, there is little incentive for the development of generalized adjustable bending or wire harness tooling.
Jewelry on the other hand, seldom has tight pre-determined dimensional requirement, but similar pieces used together should be similar enough to be pleasing to the user. A jig is an ideal tool to nearly identical parts or parts with minor artistic differences identifying the parts as hand made. For jewelry, the absence of a specific dimensional requirement permits the pins to be placed in a pattern with a discrete resolution such as is characteristic of a grid or array pattern.
The volume of similar parts made in a jewelry project is usually rather small and there usually are several sets of similar parts, sometimes in graduated sizes. A jig or set of jigs each having several fixed bending points can be used to fabricate a variety, but finite number, of shapes. Therefore, an adaptable jig proves useful to jewelry artisans and other craft producers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,632,086, by Gary Helwig, is a typical fixed jig having 4 bending pins spaced for the construction of several wire sculptures. Helwig's company also catalogs fixed bending jigs with other patterns for construction of other wire jewelry shapes. Fixed jigs in the prior art do not have general means to retain the beginning end of the wire being bent, therefore, the end must be held by with a pair of pliers until the wire workpiece is bent sufficiently to tend not to move the loose starting end away from its initial position.
One patent shows an adjustable frame having bars with T slots to receive threaded bending pins adapted for use as a wire harnessing jig. Wire harnesses are large structures and there is very little load placed on the bending pins which have a primary function to hold the bundle of wires prior to tying with cord or tape. There is no significant stress applied by the action of bending the usually very flexible wires. This invention is not adaptable to small jig frames because of the size of the T slot holding bars. The wire harness jig requires tools to change and cannot be made usefully small enough to be hand-held.
Although various types of wire bending jigs have been disclosed in the prior art, and some have been designed for use with small diameter wire and the shapes particularly useful for wire jewelry and wire components such as springs and retainers, none have the flexibility of assembly to comprise a universal bending jig capable of re-configuration to make components meeting the specifications of end uses.